


the rattling nib

by burnttongueontea



Series: time, as a symptom [5]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam-turned-them-human AU, Crowley is Good With Kids (Good Omens), Fluff, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), Human Crowley (Good Omens), Humor, M/M, Post-Canon, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), Writer Crowley (Good Omens), so this is the most self-indulgent thing i've written... WHAT OF IT
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-02-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 14:33:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28814964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnttongueontea/pseuds/burnttongueontea
Summary: ‘Do I – do Iwhatnow, sorry?’‘Write,’ the marketing director repeats, holding up Crowley’s bullshit-laden proposal document and waving it slightly. ‘I mean - are you a writer? In your spare time, do you write?’*It's a few years down the line from the failed Apocalypse, and Aziraphale and Crowley are finding that retirement suits them rather well.Retirement from Heaven and Hell, that is. Retirement from theirhumanjobs seems all too far away.Still, Crowley is determined to make what fun he can out of his new freelancing gig. After all, it's not like the universe can have any more surprises in store for the two of them...
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: time, as a symptom [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577767
Comments: 4
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Continuation of an AU where Adam made Aziraphale and Crowley human, as part of fixing reality after the Apocanope. 
> 
> I first wrote this story back in November 2019, but didn't start posting it until now, ~~because 2020~~ because I'm unreasonable.
> 
> Thank you to Z A Dusk, Dashicra1, and ArcticRose for the beta.

Meetings.

Crowley should stop going to meetings.

He’s had _much_ more enough of staring at office walls, even if they do tend to have generic art pieces rather than demotivational posters slapped on them these days. If his arse could go the rest of its days without parking on another office swivel chair, he’d be the happiest ex-demon on Earth.

(Admittedly not difficult, since he is also - as far as he knows - the _only_ ex-demon on Earth.)

Problem is, the only way to stop the meetings is to stop the work. And facts are facts: beloved as it is, the profits from the South Downs bookshop are not going to be keeping anyone in decent sheepskin slippers or gardening gloves.

Besides which, if Crowley stopped the work. He’d still definitely be staring at walls.

Only they’d be the same ones, all the time.

He’s currently in a meeting with a marketing director named Paul – and isn’t that just _exactly_ what a late-career marketing director with an over-reliance on freelancers should be named, Paul – waiting for him to finish re-reading Crowley’s bid for this job. (He’s created a proposal for a viral campaign that Paul will almost certainly say he doesn’t “get”.) The walls have floral paintings on them, which should be dull and inoffensive, but instead set Crowley on edge, because – like rip-off Georgia O’Keeffe pieces – they’re all distinctly yonic. He’s trying very hard not to stare at them too obviously. Also, not to shrivel up and die of tedium, right there on the spot.

He doesn’t actually mind the work, per se. He likes coming up with the ideas, knitting the disparate pieces together, finally seeing his plans come to life. He likes – no, he _loves_ – being his own boss. Getting to pick exactly who he works with, and who he doesn’t. Sometimes it’s a start-up wanting to get their name out there with the edgiest PR stunt of the year; sometimes, a larger organisation who’ve taken a fancy to the idea of themselves in the guerrilla marketing game. Other times, it might be a lone entrepreneur who simply doesn’t have the budget to throw at a traditional campaign. (Those are the jobs he likes best.) His business card is vague, and the best arrangements tend to get set up by word of mouth. Essentially, if somebody somewhere needs something interesting to happen – they ask Crowley.

What he doesn’t like is the paperworky bits, especially when he gets contracted by a proper big company like this. The stiffness of it, the obsession with jargon and legalese, the endless bloody _meetings_. He’s started taking the piss when he has to submit any kind of formal proposal for a job, ignoring half the stated requirements and seeing just how ridiculous he can get away with making it. Part of him is hoping they’ll get annoyed enough to stop asking for a paper trail, and let him do his job in peace. Part of him just longs to know how far he can push the suits before they actually show him the door.

(That did happen, once. Aziraphale wouldn’t let it go for weeks, kept highlighting this one cell bright red in their shared annual finances spreadsheet. He’s now kept carefully under the belief that Crowley doesn’t do the silly memos any longer.)

On the other side of the table, just as Crowley is on the verge of releasing a pointed sigh of impatience, Paul snorts quietly to himself while reading.

‘Problems?’ enquires Crowley, crossly.

‘No, not even slightly. It’s just very funny, that’s all,’ Paul replies, turning a page. ‘Do you write, by any chance?’

‘Do I – do I _what_ now, sorry?’

‘Write,’ he repeats, holding up Crowley’s bullshit-laden proposal document and waving it slightly. ‘I mean - are you a writer? In your spare time, do you write?’

Crowley stares at him as if he’s talking Greek. (Which wouldn’t have been a problem, once upon a time, but now he thinks he might be rusty.)

‘I can’t _write_ ,’ he says, baffled.

‘You wrote this.’

‘It’s a campaign proposal. Not a _thing_.’

‘Well,’ says Paul. ‘Tell me if you ever try your hand, and I’ll read it. Anyway. In terms of the budget we had allocated – ’

*

 _Stupid bloody suggestion_ , thinks Crowley out of the blue, a few months later.

He’s doing the hoovering when the thought pops into his head. It’s a major issue with hoovering: very meditative activity. Encourages your thoughts towards the abstract and the distant. With cooking, it’s alright: you can always put the radio on, so there’s something else to occupy the mind. With hoovering, though, you’ve got no choice but to listen to the drone from the machine.

Neither, of course, does anyone else who happens to be within earshot of you. As Crowley will shortly be reminded.

 _Basic privileged arrogance, that's what it was_ , he thinks as he runs the hoover along the base of the kitchen cupboards, watching stray sesame seeds disappear up the pipe with some satisfaction. _Who even is this Paul guy, to just up and tell a stranger what he should be doing with his life? He fancied taking credit for someone else’s success, I reckon. What did he think? That I was so desperate for a few scraps of flattery, I’d go and write a whole bloody book for him?_

Crowley's inner monologue improvises fluently on this theme for quite some time before it can be interrupted. He’s eradicated all the sesame seeds, and is honing in on some flakes of onionskin, when the kitchen door pops partway open. Crowley looks up and sees a round, suspicious face advancing slowly through the gap, like a Moray eel wanting to know what’s going on outside the safety of his lair.

The worst thing is, you see him like that, nose wrinkled in the exact way that means he’s about to tell you off, and that happy little voice in the back of your head _still_ says: _oh, hello, one-I-love!_

‘How long are you going to be doing that for?’ Aziraphale enquires, loudly, over the noise.

Crowley turns the hoover off with his foot.

‘For about as long as I usually do it on a Saturday morning,’ he answers, leaning sideways onto the oven, in a way he presumes looks debonair and dashing. His elbow comes to rest on the hob control panel. Worryingly, something beeps.

Aziraphale purses his lips.

‘It’s only that I’m trying to read _King Lear_.’

‘Gosh,’ says Crowley. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

With the effortless serenity that only years of experience can produce, Aziraphale ignores him.

‘The noise isn’t very conducive, my dear.’[1]

‘Won’t be long. Why don’t you switch to something lighter? Your _Just-William_? Or I’ve got some great comics about a time-travelling robot gang, that Beth lent me. On the hall table.’

‘No,’ sighs Aziraphale. ‘No. I’ll go down and do a clear-out of the pin-board in the shop, I think. Some of those notices must be _dreadfully_ out of date.’

‘Alright. Well, I’ll be done in a jiffy. Don’t worry yourself too much, Granddad.’

Aziraphale flashes him a dark look, before withdrawing again behind the door. Okay: file that joke under _not as popular as it used to be_. Still, there’s always hope. (Crowley’s been planning on bringing the term ‘old fart’ into circulation, as an affectionate nickname, but he hasn’t yet found his moment. Weather conditions have to be just right.)

*

When he’s finished cleaning the kitchen, Crowley flops down on the armchair in his study, with his laptop. Which he picked up, obviously, because he wants to read the news, and catch up on gossipy YouTube videos.

He reads it. He watches them.

 _What’s somebody like me going to write about, anyway?_ he asks himself after that, opening Google Docs. _Memoirs of a former demon? Comic essays on history’s worst abuses of free will? Someone already did The Screwtape Letters, you know.  
_

He stares at the blank page.

The blank page stares at him.

 _Stupid bloody suggestion_ , he thinks again, and clicks out of the window.

*

It's the week after this that babysitting gig lands him in hot water.

The incident happens on a Thursday night. By unspoken arrangement, Thursday has come to be the routine date night for Lou and Julia (or Loolia, as absolutely nobody likes Crowley to refer to them). Which is one of the advantages of middle-aged romance, of course: nobody has any objection to a little practical scheduling. There _are_ a few teenagers in the village who will babysit for pocket money, but Crowley’s cheaper (read: cost-free), and he gets on much better with Beth. Which is not to be sniffed at. Beth doesn’t get on with everyone, and when you’re suddenly having to share your mum with a new girlfriend, every little helps.

The system has been in place for long enough that Crowley and Beth have now established their own routine. A fairly chaotic routine, but a routine nonetheless. They begin with an activity that Crowley describes to other adults as ‘tiring Beth out’ but refers to privately as ‘winding Beth up’, most often playing card games so fast-paced and aggressive that they both end up with stinging palms from slamming their hands down on the kitchen table.

Then, Crowley ‘tells Beth to get ready for bed’, which sounds fairly straightforward, but in practice tends to involve a prolonged and well-rehearsed discursive exploration of the nature of power, justice, and the rule of law. Concluding, of course, with mutual agreement on the inestimable value of a good night’s sleep.

Finally, they wrap things up with ‘half-an-hour of stories’, which usually lasts more like a whole hour. This leaves Crowley just enough time for one episode of whatever’s on the TV before he hears a key in the front door. And then he lies straight to Lou’s face about what time Beth went to bed.

This week, though, things have panned out differently. Beth seems tired out already by the time he arrives; she only wants to play one round of cards, and is practically dead to the world after the first ten minutes of story-time. Which he’s a little bit miffed about, frankly, because this week’s instalment was going to be pacy as anything, and he’d had a _killer_ cliffhanger lined up, if he did say so himself. By the time Loolia get back from their life-drawing class, Beth’s been asleep for actual hours.

As usual, he hangs around in the corridor for a quick chat with Lou before leaving. Not much in her cottage has changed since the day Aziraphale and Crowley first pitched up on her doorstep, after getting stranded down the road by a broken-down Bentley. (Sometimes he suspects she still thinks of them both as hapless, pitiable vagrants.) Lou hasn’t changed much either, apart from the addition of an adopted daughter, a girlfriend, a couple more literary awards, and a lot more grey hairs. Not necessarily in that order.

It's not until the conversation pauses, as Lou disappears in search of a DVD to lend him, that it occurs to him to bring up his charge's strange behaviour.

‘By the way,’ he calls out, while pulling on his jacket, ‘is everything okay with Beth at the minute?’

‘Yes,' comes the answer, floating through from the living room. 'At least I think so. Why do you ask?’

‘Just that she went to bed a bit early tonight.’

‘How early?’

Crowley realises that he has made a serious strategic error. Time for some quickfire mental maths, before Lou has a chance to notice he’s hesitating.

‘Dunno,’ he hedges. Beth only went to sleep half-an-hour past her usual bedtime, so in relative terms… ‘I mean. About an hour early.’

‘Huh.' Lou's raised voice seems relaxed. 'Well, I’ll keep an eye on her tomorrow, but I wouldn’t worry too much. She was at a sleepover last night. I was _promised_ they didn’t stay up very late, but I have a feeling she might have started telling fibs about that sort of thing.’

‘ _No_ ,’ says Crowley emphatically. ‘Surely not. Lying to you? Where would she even get the idea?’

There’s an unexpected silence, where there should be a response to his question. And then:

‘What’s this?’

Crowley follows her into the living room and, with a horrible sinking feeling, sees Lou leafing through the scribbled-upon pages of a battered wiro notebook, which she must have just found on the coffee table.

‘Oh. No no no no. Don’t look at that.’

She folds the notebook shut abruptly and puts her head on one side, a terrifying glint in her eye.

‘I won’t look if you tell me what it is,’ she says.

‘It’s nothing. Just for Beth’s bedtime stories.’

‘Yes, I can see that.’

‘Well, she likes them to get _really_ complicated and it’s hard to have all those ideas on the spot so I just – ’

‘Started writing them down in advance,’ Lou finishes for him.

‘Can I have it back?’

‘No,’ says Lou pleasantly. ‘I need to read a bedtime story, too.’

Crowley makes a long and profoundly tortured noise. ‘Don’t.’

‘Too late, my friend. It’s alright, I won’t tell you if I hate it.’

Then she steers him firmly out of her front door.

And that, apparently, is that.

[1] We hasten to add that Aziraphale is very grateful when Crowley does the vacuuming. He’s simply never understood why Crowley feels the need to do it so _often_.


	2. Chapter 2

_Well, serves her right_ , thinks Crowley, when Lou never says anything about the notebook again. _Flipping novelists_. _She probably thought I was harbouring some kind of secret literary merit. When it really is, genuinely, just a VERY stupid story designed to make a specific eight-year-old wet herself laughing. And now she’s embarrassed._

He’s down with a migraine next Thursday, and can’t come to babysit. The Thursday after that, he has an evening meeting in London which he _really_ can’t reschedule.

All of which is a perfect coincidence, of course.

*

‘Ah,’ says Aziraphale, stopping as he reaches the top of the stairs. He’s carrying the big cork notice-board that usually hangs downstairs on the wall of the shop, behind the counter. Crowley is trying to go down the same stairs, carrying two large bags of recycling from the kitchen. As has been proven many times, it is impossible for Aziraphale plus Crowley plus two large items to move through their tiny upstairs corridor at the same time, in opposite directions.

Crowley squints at the notice-board.

‘What are you doing with that up here, you daftie?’

‘Well, you know I said I was going to clear the old notices off it? It turns out, _all_ of them were old. I couldn’t find anything that had been on there less than five years. Not a thing.’

Aziraphale sounds a little betrayed, as if still processing this sudden disillusionment about his business’s services to the community. Crowley will send him a link to the village Facebook group, and this will be a spousal good deed, and he will _not_ feel regret over it when he has to listen to Aziraphale describing every single post he sees there.

‘That doesn’t explain why you brought the thing up here,’ Crowley points out.

‘I thought we’d burn it.’

‘ _Burn_ it?’

‘On the hearth. The cork will make good kindling.’

‘It’s too big!’

‘Obviously, I can see that. We’ll chop it up. I imagined it might be rather fun.’ He wiggles. ‘You know. Rustic.’

‘Oh, yes, sure,’ grumbles Crowley. ‘We’ll chop it up. With my garden axe. That lives in the shed. After we’ve carried the whole thing back down the stairs again.’

Aziraphale simply looks unhappy.

‘Here,’ says Crowley. He dumps the two bags of rubbish at the side of the hallway, and relieves Aziraphale of the noticeboard. Then he turns around and carries it through to their bedroom.

‘What are you doing?’ enquires Aziraphale, following close behind.

Crowley puts the noticeboard down by the foot of the bed, and starts unlocking their bedroom window.

‘Making use of a shortcut,’ he explains, pushing up the bottom section of the sash window. ‘You wouldn’t know about it.’

He lifts up the whole notice-board, rotates it until it is horizontal, and then posts it lengthways through the gap.

‘Oh!’ exclaims Aziraphale, leaning one hand on the windowframe and craning his neck to watch it fall.

Carried aloft momentarily on its wide surface, the noticeboard sails gracefully out before nosediving and landing square in the middle of the patio, where the frame breaks noisily apart on impact.

Crowley shrugs.

‘Easy.’

‘Reckless,’ corrects his not-husband happily. ‘What if it had hit the garden table?’

But he’s not preoccupied by the thought, concentrating instead on getting his arm through Crowley’s, leaning a head on his shoulder, and sighing as he looks out over their back garden.

Crowley’s still surprised by how much fun it is, when this sort of thing happens. He thought the size of the place was going to be nothing but an inconvenience. The property market in specific small villages on the South Downs, you see, does not quite offer the pace and thrill of the property market in London. The cottage that was perfectly situated at the far end of the high street, just far enough away from the busy stretch to be bearable, wasn’t really built to house both a shop _and_ a home. So, their upstairs flat is on the poky side.

Back when they were drawing up floorplans, Crowley’s sketches were all firmly in line with modern thinking on what should be done with poky spaces: _open them up_. Instead of a kitchen, a hall, and a living room, he’d pictured them knocking walls through to make one big-ish space, and using furniture to divide it artfully into areas for _eating_ and _cooking_ and _sitting_.

But Aziraphale wouldn’t have it. _Doors_ , he insisted. _We are having doors_. With the predictable result that the doors connect rooms you could not swing a cat in, and the unpredictable result that Crowley loves them. After all, they don’t want for space. The garden is spacious; the shop is spacious; the Downs and the ocean are spacious indeed. If they’re both in the flat, it means they _want_ to be at home together, and so knocking elbows and knees at every turn feels strangely joyful. They kiss, punctiliously and almost absent-mindedly, when they have to shuffle past each other in a narrow section.

Aziraphale lifts his head from Crowley’s shoulder, and announces:

‘While I have you, dear, I meant to tell you I bumped into Lou when I was picking up your prescription this morning – ’

‘ – you didn’t bloody _tell_ her I need – ’

‘Don’t be absurd, my love. Anyway, I’ve invited her over for a cup of tea today. Around three.’

‘Oh,’ says Crowley. ‘Sorry. Up to my ears in it this afternoon. Work, I mean. Up to my ears in work. Probably no time to join for chit-chat.’

Aziraphale’s arm loosens slightly, and ominously, around Crowley’s.

‘Crowley,’ he says, and his voice isn’t very cheerful now. ‘What’s happened between you and Lou?’

‘ _What_? Nothing.’

‘You’ve been avoiding her.’

‘No I haven’t.’

‘I don’t think I’ve seen the two of you in the same room for weeks!’

‘We-ell. That’s normal, isn’t it? Sometimes you don’t see your friends for a few weeks. It happens. Random happenstance. Anyway, she _isn’t_ even my friend. She’s yours.’

Ah, shit. Aziraphale has really let go of Crowley’s arm now. He is turning to his not-husband, and doing one of those utterly unspeakable things he knows how to do with his face.

‘My goodness, Crowley,’ he says, softly disappointed. ‘I hope you won’t let _her_ hear you say that.’

‘I didn’t mean it like – I don’t mean – that came out wrong.’

‘I’ll say.’

‘Sorry.’

‘Won’t you even tell me what she did?’

‘Nothing. She didn’t do anything,’ insists Crowley.

Which is true. _She really didn’t have to go and read it, if she didn’t want to have to pretend she liked it. No-one made her. I told her not to. It was between me and Beth, wasn’t it?_

Aziraphale is examining Crowley now, tender and concerned, as if hoping to get the truth out with an X-ray stare. Motherfucker. Crowley tries to act cool, but is almost certainly undone by his failure to make eye contact. It’s a good thing Aziraphale only has two of the things to work with these days, or this cottage really _would_ be too small for the both of them.

‘Well, I’d better get back down to the shop,’ the former angel says, wistfully, and squeezes past Crowley into the hallway. He doesn’t kiss him as he goes.

*

When Crowley goes to join them for tea that afternoon, Lou has her arm stretched right out across the back of the big couch, bold as brass. She aims a big, easy grin at him, as he slopes bashfully into his own living room.

‘Hello, stranger.’

‘Alright, Lou?’ he mumbles back, half-hearted.

Crowley takes a seat on the small-couch, where he can more-or-less hide behind Aziraphale, who – luckily – is burning with important topics of conversation, and eager to resume speaking as soon as possible.

‘Now, Lou,’ he’s saying, patting his knees and looking serious. ‘Crowley’s just told me we have a village Facebook group. Did _you_ know we had a village Facebook group?’

‘I did,’ Lou confirms. ‘But I haven’t joined it. Shame to miss out on the community spirit, or whatever it is that happens there, but people will only recognise my name.’

‘Is that really such a bad thing? After all, you made friends with _me_ because I recognised your name.’

‘I made friends with _you_ because you deflated my authorial ego before it even occurred to you to ask my name,’ Lou says flatly. ‘Also, you would have died on the roadside if I hadn’t.’

Aziraphale’s head tilts to the side, and he goes quiet for a few moments, as if considering whether to challenge this version of events.

‘Good point,’ he says, eventually.

‘Anyway, I don’t think anyone below the age of thirty is even _on_ Facebook these days. You did tell him that, didn’t you, Anthony?’

Ah. So the camouflage-yourself-by-sheer-willpower thing isn’t working.

‘Nooo,’ Crowley says in an undertone, regretfully admitting to his own presence as a real live person in the room. ‘No, I did not tell him that. I did not think that he needed to know.’

But it’s already too late. Aziraphale is starting to look puzzled.

‘So where _are_ the young people putting up their notices, then?’ he asks.

There’s a muted, mournful keening sound from the kitchen, as the kettle starts to whistle. Crowley perks up.

‘I’ll get the tea,’ he says.

But he finds his knee is already being patted into submission.

‘No, no, my dear,’ Aziraphale tells him, as he gets to his feet. ‘You stay here and chat.’

He doesn’t know why he obeys. Maybe it all just happens too fast. Aziraphale goes out, and shuts that blasted damned unnecessary living room door behind him, and then Crowley and Lou are alone with each other in a confined space. There’s no chance the ex-angel did _that_ by accident.

Seconds pass.

‘Nice weather we’ve been having,’ says Crowley.

‘Hmm. Sorry about the Facebook thing.’

‘If you can explain to him what young people these days do to earn money, instead of writing nice polite notices to offer their car-washing services, I’ll let you off the hook.’

‘Jesus, _I_ don’t know. Pass. I’ll live without your forgiveness.’

A gentle breeze of awkwardness stirs the room, and they fall into silence again for a moment. Crowley looks out the window, at a vintage motorcycle just passing down the high street. Lou looks over at the overstuffed bookshelf.

‘By the way,’ she says, rather casually. ‘Do you remember that story for Beth you left at my house?’

‘Left _against my will_. Yes.’

‘Well, I did read it.’

‘And you hated it?’

‘No, actually. I sent it to my agent.’

There’s an extremely long silence.

‘Listen, Lou,’ hisses Crowley. ‘There are things you don’t know about me. My past is _darker_ than you can imagine. And do not assume I can’t still – ’

‘Oh, shut up. Anyway, if you have any more where that came from, he knows another agent who’d be very keen to add them to her children’s list. And if you don’t, then I suggest you start writing them, because God knows there’s money to be made in that market. You know, merchandising and all that.’

‘I don’t care about money!’

Lou scoffs. ‘How many times have you moaned to us about wanting to quit freelancing? How do you think that’s going to happen?’

‘Not like _this_ , is blooming how!’

‘Well, think about it, at least. I’ve passed on your email address. She’ll be in touch.’

‘What are we talking about?’ says Aziraphale, reversing through the door with a fully-laden tea tray.

‘Nothing AT ALL,’ Crowley almost bellows.


End file.
